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  • Dr Leslie Sikos

    Dr Leslie Sikos

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Associate Professor Leslie Sikos

Associate Dean (Computing and Security)

Staff Member Details
Telephone: +61 8 6304 5189
Email: l.sikos@ecu.edu.au
Campus: Joondalup  
ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3368-2215

Leslie is the Associate Dean of Computing and Security at the School of Science.

Current Teaching

  • CSG2305 Computer Forensics
  • CYB6007 Digital Forensics
  • CYB6015 Cybersecurity Incident Detection and Response

Current Coordination

  • U65 Bachelor of Computer Science

Background

Leslie F Sikos, PhD, SMIEEE, MACS CP, FHEA, is a computer scientist specialising in cybersecurity applications powered by artificial intelligence and data science. He holds two PhD degrees and the Graduate Certificate of Academic Practice, coupled with industry certificates and industry experience in enterprise-grade ICT infrastructures. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate units at four universities (in Australia and overseas) in all delivery modes, and served as a unit coordinator, course coordinator, and Acting Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning. He is an active member of the research community as an author, editor, reviewer, conference organiser, and speaker, and led major research projects with academic, industry, and government partners. He is an invited reviewer of major academic publishers such as Springer and Taylor & Francis, as well as EU research proposals, and was interviewed as a subject matter expert by the United Nations. His community engagement includes public talks, workshops, teacher training, keynote lectures, and media appearances. He is a prolific author with ~100 publications, including more than 20 books (textbooks, research monographs, and edited volumes), the most influential of which are Generative AI in Cybersecurity, AI in Cybersecurity, Data Science in Cybersecurity and Cyberthreat Intelligence, and Cybersecurity Teaching in Higher Education.

Professional Memberships

  • Since 2017 - Association for Computing Machinery, ACM (Member)
  • Since 2017 - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE (Member; since 2020, Senior Member)
    • IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Security and Privacy (Member)
    • IEEE Special Interest Group on Big Data for Cyber Security and Privacy (Founding member)
  • Since 2019 - Australian Computer Society, ACS (member; since 2020, certified professional member)
  • Since 2020 – Australian Information Security Association, AISA (Member)

Research Areas and Interests

  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Digital Forensics

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The Flinders University of South Australia, 2018.

Research Outputs

2025

Books

Conference Publications

  • Korol, A., Sikos, L. (2025). FEAR: A Novel Framework for Representing Digital Forensic Artifacts in Knowledge Graphs. DFDS ’25: Proceedings of the Digital Forensics Doctoral Symposium (Article No. 9). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3712716.3712726.

2024

Book Chapters

  • Grojek, A., Sikos, L., Holmes, D., Guidetti, O. (2024). Incident response drills on cyber ranges: Enhancing cyber-defence education. Psybersecurity: Human Factors of Cyber Defence (202-226). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781032664859-9.
  • Sikos, L., McKee, M., Ibrahim, A., Johnson, N. (2024). Human skills and sociocultural impacts of K-12 cyber security education. Psybersecurity: Human Factors of Cyber Defence (183-201). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781032664859-8.

Journal Articles

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Sikos, L., Ibrahim, A., McKee, M. (2024). National Cyber Security Licence Consultation Report. Joondalup. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/s470-wm37.

2023

Book Chapters

  • Bughio, K., Sikos, L. (2023). Knowledge Organization Systems to Support Cyber-Resilience in Medical Smart Home Environments. Cybersecurity for Smart Cities: Practices and Challenges (61–69). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24946-4_5.
  • Sikos, L. (2023). Learning Environments for Digital Forensics Teaching in Higher Education. Cybersecurity Teaching in Higher Education (127–139). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24216-8_6.

Journal Articles

  • Alatram, A., Sikos, L., Johnstone, M., Szewczyk, P., Kang, JJ. (2023). DoS/DDoS-MQTT-IoT: A dataset for evaluating intrusions in IoT networks using the MQTT protocol. Computer Networks, 231(2023), Article number 109809. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2023.109809.
  • Sikos, L., Valli, C., Grojek, A., Holmes, D., Wakeling, S., Cabral, WZ., Karie, NM. (2023). CamDec: Advancing Axis P1435-LE video camera security using honeypot-based deception. Journal of Computer Virology and Hacking Techniques, 19(4), 565-577. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11416-023-00463-4.
  • Sikos, L. (2023). Cybersecurity Knowledge Graphs. Knowledge and Information Systems, 65(9), 3511-3531. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-023-01860-3.
  • Malik, I., Ibrahim, A., Hannay, P., Sikos, L. (2023). Developing Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems: A Review of State-of-the-Art Malware Detection Approaches, Gaps, and Future Directions. Computers, 12(4), Article number 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers12040079.

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Ibrahim, A., Sikos, L., McKee, M. (2023). Going beyond: Cyber security curriculum in Western Australian primary and secondary schools. Final Report. Joondalup. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/41ZN-5R55.

2022

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2022). Anomaly Detection in Cybersecurity Datasets via Cooperative Co-Evolution-Based Feature Selection. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 13(3), 1-39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3495165.

Conference Publications

  • Cabral, WZ., Sikos, L., Valli, C. (2022). Shodan Indicators Used to Detect Standard Conpot Implementations and Their Improvement Through Sophisticated Customization. 2022 IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (1–7). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/DSC54232.2022.9888911.

Reports

  • Johnson, N., Ibrahim, A., Sikos, L., Glowrey, C. (2022). Cyber security curriculum in Western Australian primary and secondary schools: Interim report: Curriculum Mapping. Mt Lawley. Edith Cowan University. https://doi.org/10.25958/x9r3-d254.

2021

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2021). The Evolution of Context-Aware RDF Knowledge Graphs. Provenance in Data Science: From Data Models to Context-Aware Knowledge Graphs (1–10). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67681-0_1.
  • Kang, J., Sikos, L., Yang, W. (2021). Reducing Attack Surface of Edge Computing IoT Networks via Hybrid Routing Using Dedicated Nodes. Secure Edge Computing: Applications, Techniques and Challenges (97–111). CRC Press. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/10795.
  • Sikos, L. (2021). Contextualized Knowledge Graphs in Communication Network and Cyber-Physical System Modeling. Provenance in Data Science: From Data Models to Context-Aware Knowledge Graphs (47–58). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67681-0_4.

Journal Articles

  • Sikos, L. (2021). AI in Digital Forensics: Ontology Engineering for Cybercrime Investigations. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Forensic Science, 3(3), Article number e1394. https://doi.org/10.1002/wfs2.1394.
  • Ahmed, M., Byreddy, S., Nutakki, A., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2021). ECU-IoHT: A dataset for analyzing cyberattacks in Internet of Health Things. Ad Hoc Networks, 122(1 November 2021), Article number 102621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2021.102621.

Conference Publications

  • Cabral, WZ., Valli, C., Sikos, L., Wakeling, S. (2021). Advanced Cowrie Configuration to Increase Honeypot Deceptiveness. ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection: 36th IFIP TC 11 International Conference, SEC 2021 (317–331). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78120-0_21.

2020

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2020). The Formal Representation of Cyberthreats for Automated Reasoning. Data Science in Cybersecurity and Cyberthreat Intelligence (1-12). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38788-4_1.
  • Flotyński, J., Malamos, AG., Brutzman, D., Hamza-Lup, FG., Polys, NF., Sikos, L., Walczak, K. (2020). Recent Advances in Web3D Semantic Modeling. Recent Advances in 3D Imaging, Modeling, and Reconstruction (23–49). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5294-9.ch002.

Journal Articles

  • Sadik, S., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Islam, AN. (2020). Toward a Sustainable Cybersecurity Ecosystem. Computers, 9(3), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9030074.
  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2020). A Novel Penalty-Based Wrapper Objective Function for Feature Selection in Big Data using Cooperative Co-Evolution. IEEE Access, 8(2020), 150113-150129. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3016679.
  • Sikos, L., Philp, D. (2020). Provenance-Aware Knowledge Representation: A Survey of Data Models and Contextualized Knowledge Graphs. Data Science and Engineering, 5(3), 293-316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41019-020-00118-0.
  • Sikos, L. (2020). Packet Analysis for Network Forensics: A Comprehensive Survey. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 32(March 2020), article number 200892. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2019.200892.
  • Rashid, B., Ahmed, M., Sikos, L., Haskell-Dowland, P. (2020). Cooperative co-evolution for feature selection in Big Data with random feature grouping. Journal of Big Data, 7(1), Article number 107. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40537-020-00381-y.

Conference Publications

  • Yang, W., Johnstone, M., Sikos, L., Wang, S. (2020). Security and Forensics in the Internet of Things: Research Advances and Challenges. Proceedings - 2020 Workshop on Emerging Technologies for Security in IoT, ETSecIoT 2020 (12-17). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/ETSecIoT50046.2020.00007.

2019

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L., Philp, D., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W. (2019). Knowledge Representation of Network Semantics for Reasoning-Powered Cyber-Situational Awareness. AI in Cybersecurity (). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98842-9_2.

Conference Publications

  • Philp, D., Chan, N., Sikos, L. (2019). Decision Support for Network Path Estimation via Automated Reasoning. Intelligent Decision Technologies 2019: Proceedings of the 11th KES International Conference on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES-IDT 2019) (335–344). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8311-3_29.
  • Sikos, L. (2019). Knowledge Representation to Support Partially Automated Honeypot Analysis Based on Wireshark Packet Capture Files. Intelligent Decision Technologies 2019: Proceedings of the 11th KES International Conference on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES-IDT 2019) (345–351). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8311-3_30.
  • Cabral, WZ., Valli, C., Sikos, L., Wakeling, S. (2019). Review and Analysis of Cowrie Artefacts and their Potential to be Used Deceptively. Proceedings of 6th Annual Conference on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence (166-171). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCI49370.2019.00035.
  • Flotyński, J., Brutzman, D., Hamza-Lup, FG., Malamos, A., Polys, N., Sikos, L., Walczak, K. (2019). The Semantic Web3D: Towards Comprehensive Representation of 3D Content on the Semantic Web. 2019 International Conference on 3D Immersion (IC3D) Proceedings (1-9). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC3D48390.2019.8975906.

2018

Book Chapters

  • Sikos, L. (2018). Ontology-Based Structured Video Annotation for Content-Based Video Retrieval via Spatiotemporal Reasoning. Bridging the Semantic Gap in Image and Video Analysis (97–122). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73891-8_6.

Journal Articles

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Philp, D. (2018). Representing Network Knowledge Using Provenance-Aware Formalisms for Cyber-Situational Awareness. Procedia Computer Science (29–38). Science Direct. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2018.07.206.
  • Sikos, L. (2018). Handling Uncertainty and Vagueness in Network Knowledge Representation for Cyberthreat Intelligence. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (6 p.). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/FUZZ-IEEE.2018.8491686.
  • Sikos, L., Philp, D., Voigt, S., Howard, C., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W. (2018). Provenance-Aware LOD Datasets for Detecting Network Inconsistencies. Joint Proceedings of the International Workshops on Contextualized Knowledge Graphs, and Semantic Statistics co-located with the 17th International Semantic Web Conference (Article 3). RWTH.
  • Sikos, L., Stumptner, M., Mayer, W., Howard, C., Voigt, S., Philp, D. (2018). Automated Reasoning over Provenance-Aware Communication Network Knowledge in Support of Cyber-Situational Awareness. Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management 11th International Conference, KSEM 2018 Changchun, China, August 17–19, 2018 Proceedings, Part II (132–143). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99247-1_12.

2017

Journal Articles

  • Sikos, L. (2017). A Novel Ontology for 3D Semantics: Ontology-Based 3D Model Indexing and Content-Based Video Retrieval Applied to the Medical Domain. International Journal of Metadata Semantics and Ontologies, 12(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMSO.2017.087702.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). RDF-Powered Semantic Video Annotation Tools with Concept Mapping to Linked Data for Next-Generation Video Indexing: A Comprehensive Review. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 76(12), 14437–14460. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-016-3705-7.

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L. (2017). 3D Model Indexing in Videos for Content-Based Retrieval via X3D-Based Semantic Enrichment and Automated Reasoning. 22nd International Conference on 3D Web Technology (Article No. a19). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3055624.3075943.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). Utilizing Multimedia Ontologies in Video Scene Interpretation via Information Fusion and Automated Reasoning. 2017 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (91–98). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.15439/2017F66.
  • Sikos, L. (2017). Spatiotemporal Reasoning for Complex Video Event Recognition in Content-Based Video Retrieval. Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems and Informatics 2017 (704–713). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64861-3_66.

2016

Conference Publications

2015

Conference Publications

  • Sikos, L., Powers, DM. (2015). Knowledge-Driven Video Information Retrieval with LOD: from Semi-Structured to Structured Video Metadata. Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Exploiting Semantic Annotations in Information Retrieval (35–37). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2810133.2810141.

2011

Books

Research Projects

  • In-Circuit Forensic Analysis of IoT Memory Modules, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Cyber Security Research Centre PhD Scholarship, 2020 ‑ 2024, $180,000.
  • CSCRC Sharing Cybersecurity Research Data SCReeD, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Grant, 2023 ‑ 2024, $100,000.
  • Cybersecurity curriculum in WA primary and secondary schools, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Grant, 2022 ‑ 2024, $170,210.
  • Honeypot Deployment Architecture, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, Cyber Security Research Centre Ltd, 2019 ‑ 2021, $130,000.

Research Student Supervision

Current Supervisions

Principal Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Mapping Identified Incompleteness in Knowledge-Graph Representations to Missing Artefacts for Digital Forensic Investigations involving Data Breaches and Cyber-Intrusions

Associate Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Integrating Cyber Insurance with Quantitative Risk Management in Critical Infrastructures: A Model-Based Strategy for Enhanced Security and Resilience

Completed Supervisions

Principal Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, In-circuit forensic analysis of IoT memory modules
  • Master of Computing and Security by Research, A Forensic framework for Detecting Denial-of-Service Attacks in IoT Networks Using the MQTT Protocol
  • Master of Computing and Security by Research, Honeypot deployment architecture

Associate Supervisor

  • Doctor of Philosophy, Cooperative co-evolution-based feature selection for big data analytics
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